Cook the Cookbook Project- week 6

 

This week I actually ended up skipping a menu (we will get back to it, I need to locate one of the called for items) and moving on to this burger menu.

According to the list at the beginning of the chapter burgers had the 10^th spot on the list of favorite foods. I wonder where they would fall on a similar list today. I think they would rank in the top 5 what do you all think?

The menu I worked with this week was: Broiled hamburgers, Cabbage Salad (coleslaw), and hot potato chips. This was to be followed with Canned Apricots and store bought cookies for dessert.

This is a very simple menu with virtually nothing needing to be prepared ahead of time. The little paragraph explaining the menu did say to be sure to chill the can of fruit ahead so I just put it in the fridge when I took it out of the grocery bag after shopping.

I did have to make a couple of changes to the instructions this week and I will talk about those as I discuss the places they occurred.

So the star of the menu was a Broiled Hamburger. First this was the strangest recipe for a burger I have ever made. I would love to hear if any of you have ever run into the following. The burger ingredients called for a ½ pound of ground beef for the 2 burgers, pretty normal and just what I expected. This was to be seasoned with salt and pepper with a little bit of chopped onion, again exactly what I would expect. Here is what was/is strange to me it also called for ½ cup of either water or milk to be mixed into the meat. I’ve checked several of my other vintage cookbooks and I didn’t see this addition in any of them. I found it strange and I am not sure if I liked what it did to the texture of the meat patty or not. It seemed heavier in a way and way too moist. I guess if you know you are going to be over cooking these it might be a good idea, I’m pretty sure you could cook these to death and they would still not dry out. I am glad I tried this but I doubt I will do it again. It wasn’t bad just not a change I think is necessary.

I did change a couple of things about the burgers however, first the recipe didn’t really give any toppings and I almost always add cheese to my burgers so I did add a slice of sharp cheddar and a couple of lettuce leaves to mine. The other change I had to make was the cooking method. The book called for broiling the burgers and I tried to do this but my oven broiled just was not hot enough to get the job done. So after several minutes of not getting my burgers to even look like they were thinking about getting cooked I switched them over to my cast iron skillet and they were done in a normal amount of time. Pretty if I had stuck with the broiler I would still be waiting for them to cook.

The first side dish listed is cabbage salad, or as we normally call it coleslaw. I ended up getting a bag of coleslaw blend since the cabbage display was pretty much empty and the ones there looked like they should have been tossed a few days before. I also opted to use just purchased mayo instead of making the dressing in the book which was basically just a version of mayo anyway. I had forgotten to pick up a couple of the ingredients I would have needed to make it.

The other side dish was hot potato chips. I have a couple of vintage cookbooks that talk about heating potato chips in the oven to make them taste fresher. I had never tried it so I gave it a try. They did taste really nice immediately out of the oven but by the time I took a couple of pictures and got sat down to eat they were back to room temperature and tasted just like they did straight out of the bag.

For dessert with this menu the suggestion was some canned apricots with store bought cookies. I do love canned apricots although I seldom buy them so that was almost a treat. Since I still have some of the chocolate chocolate chips cookies I made last weekend I had a couple of those rather than buying a package of cookies for just me.

So what are my thoughts this week on the menu. It was very comforting menu I do love a good burger so that was good. Again the biggest thing I am missing in these menus is some kind of seasoning other than just salt and pepper. This week at least the salt levels were more in control than last week and the portions didn’t seem so large.

I am still enjoying this journey through the cookbook and I hope you are enjoying going on the adventure with me.

I am excited for next week because the menu is centered around beef stew.